Google Wear OS Watch updates exceeds expectations

Google had revealed the new Wear OS features back in August, and has now announced the incoming of a software update for Wear OS watches, the Wear OS 2.1, polished with a new interface. The update will be available Friday onwards.

Google Wear OS Watch update features directional swipe gestures to each part of the Wear OS watch interface:

Swipe left – it would display a redesigned Google Fit with motivational goal rings that are based on activity and more active heart rate-based “heart points.”

Swipe right – this brings in Google Proactive Assistant, with prompt AI-generated suggestions and a related search shortcut, and a feed of personalized information like the weather, upcoming calendar events, flights, and more.

Swipe down – this exhibits quick settings shortcut and new dashboard controls that aids activities like silencing the watch, playing music or quickly accessing Google Pay. Quick settings also have a set of six buttons.

Swipe up – notifications are now shown in a more compressed stream. You don’t have to swipe through them one by one; you can now scroll through them in a single pane, just like you do on a smartphone. Additionally, you can expand notifications, use Google AI-created quick replies to send messages, and swipe them away.

The new animations seem to have better responses and the new gestures are praised for their fluidity and seem to work quite well on watches like the Skagen Falster 1 and the new Fossil Gen 4 Q Explorist HR.

Moreover, to access watch faces you have to hold a finger down on the watch face instead of swiping to pick new faces.

The new Wear OS watches are including new features such as NFC and Google Pay, swim-level water resistance, and onboard heart rate, but there’s more to come in the next line of Wear OS watches that plan to adopt Qualcomm’s newer chips for longer battery life in low-power modes, which might be worth waiting for.

However, even the recent Wear OS watches still use the outdated Qualcomm 2100 processor which reduces battery life and results in a much slower speed of loading apps. Google’s Wear OS Watch updates have definitely been ameliorated as compared to its previous versions, but it still has room for improvement.

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